Norsemen or Vikings

Were they peaceful traders or harrowing invaders?

A replica of a 30 m Viking ship sails into the fjord of Roskilde

In Scandinavia the Vikings were called Danes, Norsemen, Scanians, Rus (Russians) or the like, names meant to designate the regions from where the persons came. These epithets were also used abroad but seldom because people new exactly where the raiders came from. And then they were at least at a later stage called Vikings or pirates. It was in this "disguise" Europe remembers the people from the North who fell upon them from time to time when their ruler had died and government was weak.

This diverse image of the Vikings still clings. Viking-festivals in England, Scotland, France and Spain celebrate the raids - or as the festival in Catoira in Galicia pronounce: "Vikings go up the towers, shout loudly, fight each other, drink as much as they can, kidnap some young women and briefly have fun just as all the visitors have".

In Scandinavia the picture presented is much different. Here the "Vikings" are primarily disguised as traders, farmers or craftsmen and visitors who get a glimpse of what a Viking-market or trading post may have felt like.

Every year around 50 Viking-festivals are organised and are manned by living-history groups. How many Viking groups exist is not known, but each of them seldom consists of more than 20 people. The dress and live like Vikings (sometimes also privately), ply their favourite trade (forging, weaving, comb-making etc.) or they perform as fighters or sailors. In Denmark the Vikings have recently been able to get a formal recognition of the old heathen faith and the question has been raised whether we should best understand them as a kind of post-modern neo-tribe.

Were the Vikings a people apart?
Six years ago, BBC produced a programme together with experts from University College in London. It aimed at finding out to what extent people in England have Viking ancestors.

Lo and behold, it was discovered that Cumbria and Orkney were heavily populated from abroad, while the rest of England was placidly populated by Britons, Normans or Anglo-Saxons.

Much more interesting is a new survey on the cultural artefacts and traces of the Vikings and the natives in the "Danelaw". It shows that the whole area was infiltrated by people who for very different reasons adopted a wide spectrum of names, artistic expressions and ways of living (laws) at different times and according to different political situations. "Ethnic identity became a "live" issue only at certain times, and, at least in the evidence available to us, was not fundamentally determined by the scale of the settlement", claims the author.

Were the Vikings unsophisticated drunkards and heathens?
In the new edition of the "Cambridge Medieval History" which was published within the last decennium, renowned scholars have gathered to write the "Medieval History" for our time. It is quite fascinating to see that the English reign of the Danish Viking kings, Sweyn, Cnut the Great goes literally unmentioned in the articles, because the intention is to write the history of the formation of the English realm. Thus the reign of Cnut is very often considered a short (unpleasant) interval. In Encyclopaedia Britannica he is mentioned as a king for whom "the Danish element in the entourage diminished" while he apparently went native (English). It is a fact that England was more or less ruled by the Danes and Norwegians from 1013 to 1066 and then of course again from 1066. Wilhelm the Conqueror and his Normans were descendants of Danish Vikings who settled in Northern France around 900.

Is it not time that we wrote a European history where these old nationalistic perspectives are banned? Such a European history would start by acknowledging that successful medieval reigns demanded leaders of outstanding qualities, good health and long lives. When such leaders surfaced great realms encompassing many seemingly culturally diverse regions might from time to time be organised, the most wide-ranging in this period being the Frankish kingdom of Charlemagne, the German empire of Otto the Great and the North-Western Viking empire of Cnut the Great, which covered most of Scandinavia and England.

Reference: Viking and native: re-thinking identity in the Danelaw. By D. M. Hadley. In: Early Medieval Europe Volume 11 Issue 1 Page 45-70, March 2002.